


do ghosts tan?

by 01nm



Series: binder#??? universe [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Canon Jewish Character, Ficlet Collection, Fluff and Humor, Gay Male Character, Gender Dysphoria, Genderfluid Character, Ghosts, Latino Character, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Pre-Poly, Queerplatonic Relationships, Summer, Swimming Pools, Teen Romance, Trans Character, aromantic bisexual character, asexual lesbian character, mixed race character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:08:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9886022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/01nm/pseuds/01nm
Summary: Ickle collection of snarky Danny Phantom ficlets that cover a variety of headcanons.





	1. o

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FallingNarwhals](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallingNarwhals/gifts).



> this is in direct response to the ridic man who created this show, [beach-ball hartfart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Hartman), and all the stupid antics he pulls. especially recently. we (don't) love ya!
> 
>  **SMALL NOTE** : although this sits within the binder#??? universe, it does NOT coincide with the main timeline. It just uses the same headcanons/people. Also, OCs (like fan ghosts) will most likely not show up to avoid spoiling b#??? to anyone who hasn't read it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a binder, not a tanktop.

 

Most of the kids in Amity Park are at the public pool today. It’s hot and their parents probably complained that they should ‘enjoy the sun’ or something horrible like that, so here they are.

 

It’s not even really a surprise when some random ten-year-old curiously asks why “this one boy is wearing a shirt?”

 

Danny scratches at his collarbone, juggling his options in his head.

 

 _I’m pretty sure I saved you from a_ _ghost possessed, man-eating_ _tree once,_ the halfa muses. He decides to go a little bit easy on the kid. Their parent doesn’t seem to care either way, completely ignoring their child’s question in favor of digging around in their bag.

 

 _That’s probably how the kid got caught by a_ tree _of all things in the first place._

 

"I burn easily," says the boy in the white tanktop, which anybody that's been frequenting the pool for any amount of time in their life knows provides almost zero actual protection from UV rays.

 

“Riiight...” drawls Dash, who is camping out on one of the best chairs around the pool. Everybody is, at the very least, _irritated_ with him to some (hot) degree during summer, because he always hogs it. It’s got the best shade and the biggest side table.

 

Danny retaliates by stealing one of the blond’s watermelon slices. Dash tries to kick him in the knee, but he dodges away with a laugh. The other boy grumbles, but doesn’t get up to give chase.

 

Forgetting about the kid, though feeling a little disappointed in himself for not telling the truth, Danny sucks at the fruit’s juice running down his left wrist as he walks through the crowds to where his friends are hanging about.

 

“Oh man, there’s watermelon? Who brought it?” Tucker asks, floating on his silly cupcake tube in a shallow part of the water.

 

Danny swallows his mouthful. “Um, I think only Dash did? And I kinda only stole one piece.” He gives his friend an apologetic smile and shrug. “Sorry, bro.”

 

Tucker waves him off with an unconcerned “it’s cool,” and goes back to easy floating.

 

Danny responds by tossing the empty rind into a fairly far away trashcan, landing the shot, and grinning stupidly at his friends as he sits down directly into the shallowest water. “It _is_ cool.”

 

Sam absently splashes him from her position elevated on the concrete. She is dipping only her pale, thick calves into the pool. The rest of her is covered in a black poncho and a veiled hat in the color, _you guessed it,_ black.

 

“I don’t mind,” Sam tells them, sighing into the hot air. “I wouldn’t be able to stand getting that sticky watermelon goop on my _anything.”_

 

“I’m sorry, but I am _shirtless,_ and I’m already burning up,” Tucker announces. “How can you sit there in all that fabric and --”

 

“And _what?”_ Sam takes a deep, theatrically timed gulp of her complicated smoothie (it has _kale_ in it. _Kale!_ ), placing it down next to her on the sun-baked ground. “Like I said before, goths --”

 

“Don’t sweat,” Danny, Tucker, and Sam all echo at once. “They _simmer.”_

 

Tucker and Danny sigh. Sam nods their head knowingly, like praising a well-trained puppy.

 

_That’s probably exactly what she’s doing, actually._

 

They all ‘simmer’ together for a few minutes without talking. It’s nice. There’s a bunch of conversations floating all around the public area, and some of them are even interesting to hear. People from their school walk by in groups periodically, chatting. All the Casper High kids look at each other out of the corner of their eyes, nearly unreadable in their scrutiny.

 

All in all, a seemingly average day in a town that sees regular supernatural mayhem.

 

After a while, Danny makes a few hand signs at Tucker that look like nonsense to anybody but them.

 

Tucker goes ‘oh’ and tosses his iconic red hat in Danny’s direction, who promptly puts it on.

 

“You’re both morons,” huffs Sam. Translation: you’re both adorable and I hate it.

 

Her two friends chuckle knowingly and affectionately roll their eyes.

 

“So...” Tucker scratches his chin, kicking at the water a little so that he faces Danny instead of aimlessly turning in circles. “What did that kid want? I saw them pointing at you...”

 

“Eh… Y’know,” Danny deflects. “They were asking about my binder.” He shoves Tucker’s hat farther down on his head, the water close around him chilling somewhat cooler than it was a moment ago. “I just ended up telling them I burn easily.”

 

A small, awkward silence.

 

Sam fumes quietly, doing that thing where they purse their lips and jut their chin upwards. Danny already knows their thoughts on the matter; “you shouldn’t have to be ashamed” and all that.

 

Still, none of them say anything.

 

“My hair is long enough to braid in some spots,” Tucker pipes up with, faux-nonchalant.

 

“What, really?” Sam suddenly looks to be _very_ interested in this topic.

 

“Yea – in fact, I even did a couple last night.” Tucker scratches at his slightly reddened face, the sunlight on his dark skin making him look extra radiant. “Hey, Danny! Can you go get my phone for me? I have some pictures I think you all might like to see.”

 

“Hell yea I will!” Danny hops up, heedless of the water he splashes as he jogs over to their shared lounge chair.

 

It’s right next to Dash’s.

 

“Did _Kwan_ make you save a seat for us?” Danny taunts for about the third time today, one hand in Tucker’s bag searching for the phone.

 

“Shut up, you _dweeb,”_ Dash spits back cattily, still lounging about with his sunglasses on, shiny with sun tanning oil. _“Nobody_ can make _me_ do _anything,_ and you best not forget it.”

 

Danny snorts, finding Tucker’s phone and standing up. He only takes a few steps before pausing, humming shortly, and turning back around.

 

“Hey, Dash?” An annoyed grunt. “Can I have some more watermelon?”

 

Dash slowly, _slowly_ moves his hand up to his face, flicks his sunglasses down onto the bridge of his nose, and gives the other teen a very blatant ‘what the fuck are you on about?’ look over the rim of his eye wear.

 

Danny bats his eyelashes and smiles innocently.

 

...He walks away with two extra pieces of watermelon.


	2. oO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tucker's not just the BFF, he's also the BF.

  


Once upon a time, Tucker had some very unique feelings about Danny.

  


He still does, too. But back then, he hadn’t a clue what it _really_ meant.

  


Tucker used to be at the top of the class, especially in middle school. Lately, he’s been a bit busy (and disenfranchised with the educational experience in general) to really give as much of a hoot, but he still brings home grades that satisfy his parents, which have had prestigious jobs within the community since he can remember.

  


Among getting some of the best grades, answering the most questions in class, and being an all around popular guy (everybody knew his name. And his Pokemon collection!), he was also known for being ‘very sweet’ to girls.

  


...but he never actually _dated_ any.

  


He was, and still is, the kind of guy who buys everybody a little _something, something_ on Valentine’s Day.

  


His boy friends (notice there’s no hyphen – he didn’t start dating until high-school) were no exception. Because he was such a well-liked guy, nobody made a fuss when he, a boy, gave out some very obviously lovey-dovey Valentine’s to other boys. Everybody just thought he was ‘being sweet.’

  


And, well, he was!

  


...He was just also being a little _extra_ sweet with his new friend Danny Fenton.

  


Except, he consistently ‘forgot’ to be less casual while he was doing it.

  


Call him shy if you want to – but he probably just didn’t fully realize how _extra_ he was being at that point in time.

  


“It’s no big deal,” Tucker said, handing over a dozen roses to an incredibly shocked looking Danny. “Valentine’s Day was always really fun in, like, elementary school and stuff, because everybody had to give everybody something, right? So that’s what I still do.” He scoffed for extra affect, sweating slightly. “My parents expect me to do with every year anyway, so I can’t back out now...”

  


Tucker stopped himself from continuing with a further “these roses are just the leftovers, too,” not wanting to over-do it. Danny looked completely overwhelmed as it was – red roses and heart-shaped chocolate box nearly matching the blush.

  


“D- do you wanna- wanna come over today?” Danny asked, eyes all bright, with that _fricking adorable stutter_ that he went to Speech Class everyday for.

  


Tucker had to physically restrain himself by clenching his fists in order to not immediately yell _“Absolutely!”_

  


~~oOo~~

* * *

 

~~oOo~~

  


Danny’s waving a hand in his face.

  


Tucker nearly walks right into a glass door.

  


“Whoa!” Danny grabs his arm, but doesn’t pull or push him since there’s no longer a disaster to avert. “You were really spaced out for a minute there. You almost pulled a _me.”_

  


“You _do_ run into a lot of things,” Tucker admits, grabbing the door handle and throwing it open wide enough for the both of them to walk through. “Don’t worry, though – I’m not gonna suddenly convince myself _I_ can walk through walls, too. I was just thinking about Valentine’s Day.”

  


Danny is quiet for a moment. They both file into the game store.

  


“Tuk,” he says suddenly, causing Tucker to turn around with a raised eyebrow. “Did you forget that… _today_ is Valentine’s Day?”

  


Tucker can’t tell if he wants to be amused or offended. “No, I did not _forget._ Why else would we be in _here_ if it wasn’t Valentine’s Day?” He grabs Danny’s hand and shakes it around, trying to prove a point via _violent affection._ “I was thinking about other Valentine’s Days. You know – in like middle school and stuff?”

  


Danny makes a considering noise, but doesn’t appear to be too interested in the topic, so Tucker lets his boyfriend drag him into one of the aisles.

  


“If you’re here trying to sucker me into buying you the new Zelda game...” Tucker begins to warn, but Danny is fast to lay that idea to sleep.

  


“No! I’m here for _this,”_ Danny tells him, picking up a game that’s marked down several times on clearance.

  


“But… You _hate_ that game...” _I’m confused._ “And I already have a copy, so what -?”

  


“But you _love_ this game,” Danny reminds, trying to prove some sort of point. “I was gonna play it with you, online, while you’re visiting your family in Argentina this summer.”

  


_Oh._

  


“Oh.”

  


Well, _this_ is a development. Tucker’s not one for blushing, but he feels his face heat up anyway.

  


Danny temporarily stalls this (lovingly induced) emotional breakdown by suddenly planting his face onto Tucker’s chest.

  


“You’re too tall,” Danny, who hasn’t grown an inch since junior year, complains. “And you’re going away for, like, _ever._ My life is very unfair right now.”

  


Tucker wraps his arms around Danny, rocking side to side and slowly frog-marching both of them down the aisle. “And _you’re_ too _muscular._ Save some of the ghost-pummeling for us plebs, why don’t you?”

  


“Small _and_ swole,” Danny giggles into Tucker’s chest.

  


“Don’t test me, _puny.”_ Tucker purposefully imitates Dash Baxter’s voice, sending both of them into barely contained laughter. “I can still pick you up, though.”

  


And he does just that, lifting his boyfriend so that Danny’s legs are no longer touching the ground. He has to walk awkwardly to the cash register, but they’re both laughing so, like, it’s all good. Nobody’s embarrassed or anything.

  


Except maybe Danny. But he deserves it because he’s simultaneously the shortest person in their grade and the strongest being Tucker’s ever encountered.

  


Relationship goals; Tucker has _beat them out of the ballpark._

  


“Hey, Seth,” Tucker calls to the familiar checkout employee, who never actually wears the uniform unless their boss is around. They used to be a senior in school with him and Danny, but they dropped out as soon as they hit eighteen for unknown reasons. “How ya’ doin’?”

  


“Not bad,” Seth responds, barely batting an eyelash at these two high-school boys’ behavior. They gracefully accept the game Danny struggles to hand to them, being crushed against another human being and all. “Just this today? I have this – it’s pretty good, for an open beta and all.”

  


Eventually, Tucker has to put Danny down and act like normal humans (for once), since they need to pay for the game and all. Because it’s Valentine’s Day, he uses his own money, telling Danny “you can pay me back later.”

  


The two step out of the store. It’s sundown, red and orange light filtering through the spaces between Amity Park’s strangely set up buildings.

  


_It’s like the architects just didn’t care,_ Tucker thinks as he absently notes how no two buildings are the same distance apart. _Like they didn’t expect anybody to stick around for long enough to deal with the consequences or something._

  


Funny thing – how their town is overrun with ghosts and the like, but nobody ever acts like they could just pack up and _leave._

  


“What did you mean,” Danny begins, pulling Tucker out of his mind for the second time today as they slowly make their way down the sidewalk, “that I’d ‘pay you back later’?”

  


Tucker spins himself and Danny around to face each other in front of an alley between two buildings. He grabs his boyfriend’s shoulders and looks into his eyes for extra effect. “I meant – you can _literally save my life_ later, and get what little recognition you can from me that you can’t get from anybody else because you’re protecting yourself and your friends with hiding your identity.”

  


There’s a little pause as the words sink in. Wind makes the plastic bag hanging from Tucker’s right arm slap lightly against Danny’s side with a crinkly noise.

  


“Save your life, huh?” Danny muses, humming and looking off to the side as if hard at work considering the offer. “I think I can do that.”

  


And then he leans up for a sweet kiss that honestly just lights up Tucker’s world for the thousandth time.

  


...And also scares away the Guys in White that look like they were about to accost Danny, loitering around across the street in the way they do sometimes when they want to badger the town’s resident ‘ghost-know-it-all.’

  


“Works every time.” Danny smirks at the agents in white suits who are now attempting to retreat to their van without looking like their tails are in between their legs. They’re failing.

  


Tucker’s warm fuzzy feelings are gone; he’s incredulous now. “Did you kiss me _just to scare the GiW off?_ Unbelievable...”

  


Danny, at the very least, looks a little bit contrite. “Hey! It’s not my fault I can’t read the atmosphere! I thought that’s what _you_ were doing, too!”

  


Tucker mumbles, “Playin’ the gay chicken with me like we’re _tweens_ again...” and begins to walk away, shaking his head. “I swear – mama never told me there’d be boys like _this_ one.”

  


He makes Danny chase after him saying ‘sorry, sorry, my bad, Tuk come back!’ for only about five minutes before he gives up.

  


And this time, he _asks_ for the kiss. Just to be _extra_ sure.

 


	3. oOo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, Sam deals with a few days of gender dysphoria. Why? Well...

  


Sam wakes up to the sound of her mother, knocking on her door with a soft fist, as the woman does every weekday morning at 6:15 a.m. on the dot.

  


Sighing drolly, the young teen rolls around in bed for a few moments until their silk sheets uncling. There’s a thin layer of prickly hairs on their legs that makes them shiver with goosebumps, but there’s no thought of shaving in their head. Not yet, at least.

  


“Samantha!” An annoyingly perky voice calls through the wood of her door. Sam cringes. “Rise and shine, darling! Amelia says breakfast is at seven sharp – don’t come down here late, or not _appropriately_ _dressed!”_

  


“Breakfast is at seven _every_ morning, mother,” Sam grumbles, plodding across their colorfully (purple, blacks, grays – the only necessary ones) decorated room in order to reach their decadently set up vanity. “And you _don’t_ have to remind me to put on ‘appropriate clothes.’”

  


Sam picks up her hairbrush and sets off for the bathroom door, placed directly within her own room. She idly runs her brush through her hair, this way and that, until nothing is tangled.

  


...but then they stare at themself in the mirror. Their hair doesn’t look like any one style. It just looks like a mess.

  


_Kind of like how I feel,_ Sam muses with her characteristically dry humor.

  


The teen washes their face, first with an oil cleanser and then with a foamy face wash. A rosewater toner is next, followed by a honey serum. It’s sticky and thick and smells delightful. Last but not least is the everyday-wear face sunblock, which leaves a white sheen on their cheekbones.

  


It is now 6:45 a.m.

  


Sighing at the monotony of it all, Sam exits the bathroom and rustles through one of her many clothing drawers, pulling off random bits of clothing from her body and leaving them all over the floor as she moves to her closet to do the same thing.

  


_If this house wasn’t so quiet and dead,_ Sam thinks to herself, _then I could get an alarm clock and wake up whenever I wanted._

  


...but she _can’t,_ and her mother hates ‘disruptive’ noises, so she _won’t._

  


Draped across the bed are two very different outfits. They gaze about, ignoring the trail of dirty-ish clothes on the floor.

  


_Someone else will pick them up._

  


It’s 6:50 a.m.

  


Sam makes their choice.

  


~~oOo~~

* * *

 

~~oOo~~

  


It’s a nice day outside, so Sam, Tucker, and Danny all camp around in the grass under one of the trees next to the football field. A couple of kids are playing a rudimentary version of flag football on it, Dash and Kwan amongst them.

  


All it takes is for her jaw to clench a few times and a huffy breath to escape her lips before Danny’s shooting her a tiredly ( _he probably didn’t get much sleep last night..._ ) concerned look.

  


“What did your parents do _this_ morning,” he deadpans, acting like he knows exactly what’s wrong with her.

  


Which, he does. But it’s not like Sam _enjoys_ being read so _easily._ It’s like having a weakness.

  


Danny does his stupid kitten sneeze.

  


_...An_ adorable _weakness,_ she admits to herself.

  


It takes the goth teen a few seconds to respond with a, “Oh, nothing. They can be as nasty as they want, but it’s usually just all bark, no bite.”

  


Tucker wakes up long enough from his arm-slung-over-eyes nap in order to nudge at her thigh with his foot (bare, because her friends are rapscallions.) “Hey – you know, if your parents ever give you too much of that _bark,_ you can always run away to the circus. I’m sure they’d let you in faster than Danny was _brainwashed –”_

  


The boy only gets a single microsecond of self-interrupting laughter in before Sam simply rolls her body over on top of his, thus trapping him with her strength and fat.

  


“ _I’m bigger than you,”_ she sibilates into her trapped friend’s ear. Danny laughs from his position (confusingly) trying to climb the tree. “And we both know you miss gym days more than you actually go.”

  


“Urgh,” Tucker groans, though he’s laughing more than he’s groaning. “Okay, I get it! But at least I’m not a _twig_ like Danny.”

  


Danny, who has shimmied himself up most of the tree trunk by now, glares down in a way that perfectly conveys the phrase ‘I can bench press your entire family’ without actually saying anything.

  


“Okay, no, but seriously,” Danny interrupts with, serious as can be as he continues to slowly inch his way up the tree. It’s strangely magical and foreboding at the same time. “What did your parents do? You don’t look happy, and I mean you never ‘look happy,’ but you also don’t look constantly angry either. Despite the aesthetic.”

  


_I’ve gotta give him half a point for remembering the aesthetic._ “Do you know those days when none of your clothes fit the way you want them to, and you know you’re going to be feeling like shit all day long, but you have to get up and get dressed anyway?”

  


A small moment of silence.

  


“Yes,” Danny responds in a tiny voice, one leg wrapped around the lowest branch.

  


_Fucking lemur child._

  


“That’s been the past two days for me,” Sam finishes with, getting comfy on Tucker’s now pliant body.

  


“ _What!?”_ Tucker grunts from underneath her body while Danny calls a concerned “Sam!”

  


Sam flaps her hand dismissively in the air, letting out a puff of breath. “Hey, it’s no big deal. Just some days, my clothes don’t match my head. It happens to the best of us.”

  


“And you’re doing that because your parents…?” Tucker hedges, wiggling one hand out from under their tiny dog pile in order to twist it around in the air.

  


“Because their parents are _cheese-balls_ and smell like _ham,”_ Danny finishes, having made it to one of the topmost branches. Sam would be worried about him getting yelled at by a teacher if she _actually cared_ about rules and shit.

  


Which, she _totally_ doesn’t.

  


Sam idly scratches at a patch of skin underneath the skirt she forced herself to wear today so that her parents wouldn’t yell at her.

  


_...Shut up, it’s survival of the fittest._

  


The boy happily roasting underneath Sam’s body makes a noise. “I thought Jewish people didn’t eat pig?”

  


“That’s outdated,” Sam informs. “And Danny’s right – my parents eat ‘canadian bacon’ like, every morning.”

  


The lively halfa cackles from his position up inside of the tree, scanning the horizon for… whatever reason he has. She and Tucker have learned to stop questioning him so much.

  


Well… until he gasps so deeply that he chokes, launches himself from the tree, and goes sprinting off into the distance, a trail of ghostly plumes following him.

  


His two very much human friends blink in his wake.

  


“So _that’s_ why he was climbing the tree.”

  


“I hate it when that little _shitweasel_ does that.”

  


Sam and Tucker look at each other, scoff a bit, roll around in the grass until they’re both (mostly) upright, then take off after Danny.

  


Tucker forgets his shoes. Sam forgets a couple of her problems.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cut Alternate Ending: Danny's trying to transform back down the hallway after neutralizing a ghost, Tucker's too busy trying to hack into the security cameras, and there's a teacher coming down the hallway, so Sam does the smart thing and takes her shirt off, throws it at the teacher, then books it down the hallway, so the teacher is forced to chase the bra-toting half-naked student instead of the two shady ones doing nothing overtly wrong.


	4. oOoO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the dead of summer, Danny Phantom is as pale as, well, a ghost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [gets a megaphone] TOAST THE GHOST

  


The youngest Fenton has blue eyes and monolids. His skin is a dusty pale with dark freckles – his sister, an even warmer shade.

  


Daniel Rafael Fenton, who goes by ‘Danny.’

  


Josefina Jasmine Fenton, who goes by ‘Jasmine.’

  


The two siblings have light eyes, which is a trait of both of their parents. Their father’s skin tone is darker, especially in the summer months, but their mother’s can’t seem to hold much pigment besides a sunny tan.

  


Neither of them can speak a lick of Spanish – their required language classes were all French, as per Amity Park’s northern existence.

  


It doesn’t make them any less latino and latina.

  


Jack Fenton’s family immigrated to the United States when he was very young. He doesn’t remember much about living in Guatemala, but he does remember the The Chiapas Depression, which was a dry forest valley. He and his father had lived on the outskirts in a small home that his grandfather had built.

  


Madeline Brown Fenton has lived in a multitude places within the United States – her biological mother was latina, and her father white. She and her half sister, Alicia, who was from a different mother, were adopted by the Brown family into a gaggle of five other children. They grew up on a family farm, but when that was abandoned for the city, Alicia stayed behind in Arkansas while Maddie moved on to pursue higher education.

  


Lots of people liked to tell Danny and Jazz “but your mom doesn’t _look_ latina.” And they usually just shrugged and said “well, neither do we, apparently.”

  


And that, for once, wasn’t ‘just that.’

  


In elementry school, while a substitute was in charge of Jazz’s fifth grade class, the teacher had called her name for role-call… only to juggle with its pronunciation.

  


“I go by Jasmine,” Jazz had finally stopped the man, who had begun to almost sound like he was mocking her name. It wasn’t even _that hard_ – they should try and say her father’s real name.

  


“Why does your name sound like _that?”_ A white boy with equally as orange hair sitting down the row actually mocked her name, voice too much of a sneer to be anything but.

  


“Why does _your_ name sound like that, _Duss-teen?”_ The young girl huffed back.

  


And, because she was her mother’s daughter, she went at ‘Duss-teen’ during recess, claws out and ready to tussle in the dirt. For her _honor._

  


She may or may not have gotten her first (and only) detention like that.

  


Of course; her parents being her parents, she wasn’t necessarily discouraged from such behavior at all.

  


Danny’s hair used to be long, dark, and curly, until he cut it sometime in middle school. Now it just sticks up all over the place, but that does nothing to hide how thick it continues to be.

  


And nothing can hide how dark his skin gets during the summer – the only time a ‘lazy’, video-game playing boy like Danny regularly goes outside.

  


~~oOo~~

* * *

 

~~oOo~~

  


They noticed it when Danny came out of the portal during _The Incident_ _,_ fried to hell and back with skin a familiar shade of brown that his friends usually only saw during the dead of summer when they would spend most of their days roasting at the public pool.

  


...but Sam and Tucker didn’t say much about it, and neither did Danny. It was just another incredibly, unerringly weird thing about being a half ghost. Plus it helped point any suspicions away from the boy’s human half.

  


It was finally brought up one day when Sam wondered out loud why Phantom wasn’t looking quite as _toasted_ in the late July month as he was in other months.

  


“Uhh...” Danny stalled, de-transforming with a flash of light in the middle of the downstairs lab. Instantly, his friends could see exactly what Sam had pointed out: Danny’s skin went from something pale and grey to something more darkened and sun-kissed. “I have no idea?”

  


“Usually the ghosts we come across have blue or green or some other candy color as their skin,” Tucker added, crossing his arms. “Or their _everything_ is candy colored, now that I think about it.”

  


They all took a moment to wonder why ghosts were so _bright._

  


“Heh; ‘candy color’,” the resident halfa joked. Everybody ignored how the laugh sounded strained. Ghosts were terrifying _and_ colorful. “But, seriously. Who knows why? If it’s not some new power or built-in ghostly sunscreen, I’m not sure I even care enough.”

  


The three friends tromped up the lab stairs, heading towards the kitchen for some snacks. They had just got done testing and cataloging some of Danny’s ghostly powers and their strengths.

  


“You’re lucky I love you,” Tucker announced when he lost the rock-paper-scissors game, forced into making his friends some of the only non-ectoplasmically-tainted food in the house: PB&J’s.

  


When they finished their food (and a couple of ‘ecto-shakes’, as Danny liked to call his disgusting concoctions), they all marinated in their separate chairs around the Fenton household’s kitchen table, twice removed.

  


“So who’s up for going to the pool?” Asked Sam, with that sly look in her eye that deserved extra scrutiny, had the two other ‘Team Phantom’ members not already exhausted their mental prowess for one day. “I mean, I know we’ve been there everyday this week, but -”

  


“Yes, please.” Tucker was already out of his seat. Danny was getting there. They were all not-so-secretly pumped at the prospect of getting out of the oppressive mid-summer heat – the Fenton’s house was garbage at filtering anything other than warm air, since all of their temperature control went down to the lab.

  


“Cool,” Sam responded, ‘cool’ as can be. “Cool cool cool.”

  


By the time she made it to the door, Danny was already halfway out of his shirt. Everything not under his binder or shorts was browned to a light russet shade.

  


~~oOo~~

* * *

 

~~oOo~~

  


By the time the sun was setting, the three friends were walking down one of Amity Park’s streets, fresh from the pool and a little bit sweaty already. They all had a lingering aura of chlorine and sunshine.

  


“Uh, Danny?” Tucker stopped them for a moment. “Did you have those sunglasses on when we went in?”

  


“Dash took a nap,” is all Danny responded with, flicking the very familiar looking sunglasses down onto his nose momentarily to peer at his friend over the rims.

  


“Right...” Still, nobody did anything to stop Danny from apparently walking away with stolen sunglasses.

  


“I’m gonna go on ahead. See you,” Sam announced suddenly, jogging slightly and turning a corner before either of her friends could say a thing.

  


Danny and Tucker glanced at each other, shrugged, then held hands for the fun of it.

  


But because life in this town was nothing more than one big joke, it was ruined seconds later by a familiar shriek and a gasp of cold air.

  


“Ghost!” Sam yelled, struggling in the clutches of a goo-ily grinning ecto-puss. “Oh no!”

  


It flew off with the large teen goth in its green tentacles.

  


“Does this feel premediated to you at all?” Tucker questioned, only to realize that his friend had already ducked into the exact same alley and ‘went ghost.’ “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me. I am too tired for this nonsense.”

  


Tucker, the poor human without a ghostly ride, huffed and puffed as he unexpectedly had to run to catch up. Sam was yelling (not very convincingly – honestly, they’ve seen and done worse stuff than a little _kidnapping),_ Danny was speeding up ahead to give that naughty ecto-puss a good _one-two._

  


Except, when the town ghost hero got there a mere minute after the entire incident occurred, Sam was already capping the lid of her miniature sized Fenton Thermos (capable of holding only ONE (1) ghost at a time until release.)

  


“Uh.” Danny floated in the middle of the street, scratching his head. “Nice… job?”

  


“Thanks,” Sam responded, replacing the ghost tin into their pocket and pulling out their phone. “Now hold still.”

  


She snapped a couple pictures of Phantom, who looked dumbfounded in most of them.

  


“I’m lost,” Danny admitted, but obliged nonetheless. “I don’t normally go for photo shoots right after a ghost attack, but I’m not mad about it.” He even posed a little, flashing a smile.

  


“I think I know what’s going on,” Tucker said as he finally caught up. Not his fault – he can’t fly. “She wants to take pictures of how your skin changes in between transformations, like during different seasons.”

  


“What, really?” Danny peered down at his goth friend in interest, who was scrolling through their phone after several rounds of photos taken. “Why didn’t we do this at the lab and not in the middle of the street?”

  


“Because you said it was boring and you didn’t care,” Sam easily replied. “And we all know that when Danny finds something boring -”

  


“He’ll do anything to get out,” Tucker finished, smirking.

  


Danny pushed air out of his teeth, folding his arms behind his head and laying back onto nothing in thin air. “So I’ve got ADHD – big deal, what’s the problem?”

  


He yelped when Sam grabbed his booted foot and tugged, pulling him closer to the ground so that they could all crowd around her phone. “This.”

  


She flipped between several photosets – one of Danny in the winter, which was coincidentally the beginning of when he got his powers, and one of Danny in the summer.

  


Danny _Phantom_ in the winter was the near exact same skin shade as Danny _Fenton_ in the summer.

  


“Well,” Danny sniffed, actually impressed. “Would you look at that. That’s pretty neat, actually.”

  


“I guess it make sense,” Tucker conceded, swiping some sweat out from under his brow. “Your hair turns white, which is the opposite of black. Maybe your skin does that, too.”

  


“Huh,” Danny mused. “What’s the opposite color of blue eyes, then?”

  


“Not green.” Sam put her phone away and began walking down the street until they were back at the relative safety of the sidewalk. “But I’d chalk that up to the ectoplasm – most highly concentrated ectoplasmic entities we encounter are green.”

  


“Especially ecto-pusses,” Danny crowed. Both of his friends groaned. They hated the word ‘ecto-puss’ and he knew it.

  


They walked (and floated) silently for a few minutes.

  


“Is anybody but me concerned that we’re just gallivanting around with Public Ghost Enemy Number One?” Tucker piped up with. “Like, I get that it’s hot, but don’t people look out their windows -”

  


“Don’t you mean,” Danny interrupted, sliding between his two friends with a ridiculous facial expression, _“PGENO?”_

  


“ _Eugh,”_ Sam responded in disgust. _Pee-_ geno. “It’s whatever. Everybody already thinks we’re dating him anyway.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i used this as my first 'latino fentons' headcanon dumping ground, so sorry if it's messy. also i just really found the idea of 'toast the ghost' interesting.
> 
> p.s. i didn't say anything in the story because i thought it was hilarious - but sometimes when Danny transforms, he accidentally sucks objects close to his body into his ghost form. so dash's sunglasses are probably Gone Forever and Danny didn't even notice.
> 
> p.p.s. I kind of forgot this is in the b#??? series, so all references to the Fenton's race have been edited accordingly. I guess Danny is latino in all of my stories now.


	5. oOoOo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kitty talks about her first date with Johnny; age 17, in the year 1975.

  


“The 60’s and 70’s weren’t so bad.” Kitty spits her gum out onto the ground, something she lifted from one of those snot-nosed kids at the middle school, which is where she and Johnny hung out around earlier today before they realized they were in the wrong place. “I mean, I can’t really say I’ve been paying attention to- what year is it again, sug’?”

  


“2017,” Danny replies, sighing heavily.

  


“Right, right.” Kitty leans back against her boyfriend’s jacket, laid upon the ground like it’s a _bona fide_ picnic blanket or something fancy like that. “Anyway – 1975 might’a been the year we, like, died in a horrible bike crash and picked up a shadowy demon of bad luck and stuff, but it was pretty cool up ‘til then. We dabbled in some witchcraft -”

  


“No wonder,” Danny sarcastically butts in with.

  


“Yea, yea,” Kitty brushes the comment off, flicking the cosmic ash off of her impossibly existing, never-ending cigarette. “People used to think smoking was healthy back then, did you know?”

  


He raises his eyebrows. “Pretty wild stuff, history.”

  


“I’m not that old...” Kitty simpers, smacking a red-claw tipped hand against her tightly coiled and styled hair. Her skin may be pale, and her father might’ve been white, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have some amazingly well cared for afro-locks to twist and dye. “I liked the smell of burning sage – it’s what we used in all those _demon summoning rituals,_ mwahahaha.”

  


“Interesting,” the listening boy dutifully prompts.

  


“That’s where me and Johnny had our first date, actually.” Kitty takes a drag, spilling unnatural chrome white smoke from her mouth that makes Danny’s ghost sense reach up and down his throat with cold hands in response. “Some funny knick-knack shop that was actually a disguised occult and witchcraft store.”

  


“How’d he ask you out?” Danny stumbles quickly, backing out of the possible faux pas as gracefully as a newborn deer. “Or, well – how’d _you_ ask _him_ out?”

  


Kitty smirks at him. “You’re a funny little guy, you know that?” She blows smoke into his face. He doesn’t feel the need to cough. “You should chill a little. He _was_ the one to ask me out – said he’d seen me ‘round school, and he said he thought I looked like trouble. I said ‘yea, I am trouble – what of it?’” She shrugs, loose and relaxed. “We were making out at the skating park a day or two later.”

  


“Huh,” Danny intones. All of _his_ relationships sure seem _way_ more complicated than that. _I can’t tell if I like it that way or not…_ he muses. “When did he start driving that bike?”

  


“Junior year. His family was all Irish and _drunk,”_ Kitty spits, like it has importance or something. Maybe it does, “told him to stay away from me, but he didn’t. Getting a bike just seemed the right way to do it, to it, you know?”

  


“Sure,” Danny, the guy with the crummy scooter that goes a maximum of 35 MPH, responds.

  


The glowing ghost girl snaps her bright fishnets of an undetermined color (Danny remembers them being pink, but he can only see that detail while in ghost mode, which is weird, but he doesn’t really care for an explanation. He thinks it’s rad as hell) and twists her tongue around her teeth in a satisfied clicking, sucking noise.

  


“Me ‘n Johnny, we’ve got _soul brands,”_ she breathes, eyes lidded. “We got ‘em during our one year anniversary, at that witchy place. It’s how we know we’re in this together, forever. As soon as the life left our bodies, at the same time, as planned, we just _knew_ that we’d wake up again right next to each other.”

  


Danny sucks in some air, blinking up stupidly at Kitty. He feels kind of like he’s seeing her in a new light. “That’s. Cool,” he gets out lamely. Then he struggles a little bit. “Also; can you untie me now? I’m kinda gonna be late for class.”

  


Kitty laughs like he just told a funny joke, and the teen currently hog-tied, laying on the grass of an Amity Park hill, makes a stormy expression. “Didn’t I tell you to wait? I’m not getting shoved up in that little thermos of yours just because I was having some fun with my boyfriend in town!”

  


“You tried to rob a department store,” Danny deadpans.

  


“ _And!?”_ Kitty throws her arms around a little bit. “I need some new platform, velvet creepers! Plus chokers are back in style! _Chokers!_ Let me live, little boy!”

  


Danny groans and lightly grinds his face into the dirt.

  


_I guess_ _that while_ _I’m_ _up here, tied and having a nice chat with Ms-Steals-A-Lot, Johnny is off grabbing whatever his girlfriend’s heart desires. Great._

  


A horribly familiar rumble sounds in the near distance, and the downed halfa picks his torso up just long enough to watch Johnny-freaking-13 come ripping up some yonder hill, seemingly tearing up the landscape with his loud ass bike, yet doing no such thing, as his wheels don’t actually physically touch this plane.

  


“Johnny!” Kitty cries, leaping up and simultaneously nabbing the jacket from the ground. “Told you I’d keep our little cousin busy, didn’t I? I did myself such a good job, I think I deserve whatever it is you’ve got in that lovely little backpack of yours.”

  


Johnny swings one leg off his bike, smirking. His plaid red skirt stretches and flutters against his baggy, faded jeans. “I’m sure you do, Kitty.”

  


As the grungy teen ghost hands off his spoils to his excited ghost girlfriend, he saunters over to where Danny is nervously flopped on the ground. _“Well_ – don’t you look oh so happy, all tied up down there. Anything you’ve got to say to me, punk?”

  


“Nope,” Danny responds with a little laugh that sounds anything but calm. “Just, uh… Just that your first date sure sounded interesting.” _And probably has a lot of clues as to why you_ died _so young._

  


“Aw, she told you about that?” Johnny scratches the side of his pale, freckled face. He actually looks a little embarrassed. “Kitty, what’d I tell you about tellin’ everybody that story all the dang time? It gets old, dunnit?”

  


“Don’t you rag on me, Johnny 13!” Kitty shoots back, several pieces of clothing and makeup and jewelry floating aimlessly around her in a casual show of telekinesis. “I happen to _enjoy_ talking about the old days, you know? Before _this_ thing,” she lightly kicks at the Shadow hiding underneath the stalled bike. It barely flinches, “started following us around.”

  


“I hear ya’, I hear ya’...” Johnny walks over to Kitty and slings an arm around her shoulders, giving her an affectionate and sloppy kiss. Danny gags on the ground, with very little exaggeration.

  


“Can I go now?” The teen gripes from his humiliating position, gaining the attention of the other two ghost teens from a time far removed. “I really _do_ have to get to class this time. And as much as I _love_ chatting with you about ‘the good old days’ while the other one goes and commits _illegal atrocities...”_ He lets his sarcasm hang in the air, eyebrows climbing his forehead.

  


Johnny rolls his eyes, then juts his chin. Kitty waves her hands.

  


The ectoplasmic binding around Danny fades, and he leaps into the air, only to forget that he de-transformed a while ago, so he crashes back to the earth with a curse.

  


Kitty laughs at him, and Johnny shakes his head. Danny can’t help the flush that rises all over his face. It’s kind of like being made fun of by the older, cooler kids at school.

  


Except. Everybody here’s a ghost or something.

  


_...Go figure._

  


“Can you two stop making out behind my school’s dumpsters?” Danny demands, shaking a fist. Like _he’s_ the one who’s from 1960 and not them. “Every time you show up, mackin’ on each other, calling me ‘little cousin’, it just gets more and more suspicious!”

  


“Sure, sure.” Johnny waves a hand laxly, Kitty already perching on the bike with her otherworldly stick of smoke in her mouth. “Whatever you say, _little cousin.”_

  


Danny groans extra loud just to be heard over the bike’s revving engine.

  


_Freaking ghosts in love,_ he mentally grumbles. Though he obligingly waves back as Kitty bids him goodbye, Johnny putting a foot to the pedal ( _wait, do bike’s even have pedals? I’ll have to ask Johnny some other day_ ) and rocketing them off and away.

  


_Probably off to commit some more crimes,_ Danny mentally admits to himself with a sigh as he tumbles down one of Amity Park’s many hills and books it back to school.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the wiki says Johnny is a 1950's ghost but i don't?? care about the 1950's (lmao sorry) so i changed it to 1960's/70's. that's basically the same, right??
> 
> p.s. if anything looks wonky it's because i'm less than a week out of some surgery. i'll fix it when i'm not half-dead.


	6. oOoOoO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kwan gifts Dash some (admittedly awful) poetry. Dash sews Kwan an (admittedly tasteless) panda bear.

 

Kwan cheats off of him in Algebra I, and he cheats off of Kwan in History.

 

It’s just this thing they do where they both care about each other’s grades (and positions on the football team, but _semantics.)_

 

They haven’t been doing it for long – it just started when they hit High School and it was all “scholarships, scholarships, scholarships” and AP classes taunting in the distance or “if you don’t plan on going to college, why are you even alive right now” mentalities that sort of forced some kids’ hands towards the sports route instead of the smarts route.

 

Which isn’t to imply that kids in sports aren’t smart or something stupid like that – no way, Dash knows his guys (and girls) and none of them are idiots, not by a long shot.

 

Anyway – point is that they have a system.

 

They’ve always had some kind of system, actually. They’ve been neighbors since they were only five years old, and it shows in their daily life.

 

Most of the time, either one of the boys will be spending the night at the other’s house, whether it’s because they planned it that way, or it just turned out that way.

 

When they were about nine, they tried to build a ‘bridge’ between their two bedroom windows, both on the second floor of their houses. All they managed to do though was steal way too much smelly cardboard and questionable wood from the dumpsters in town and then promptly break their bridge as soon as they used it.

 

Dash, currently drinking from the water fountain in the gym, chuckles lightly at the memory.

 

He was left hanging out the window, Kwan barely holding onto his hand as they both screamed their heads off at 12 a.m.

 

Dash’s mom gave him a lash across his backside before he could even say anything, but Kwan’s dads were much more lenient with the other boy. Dash was, admittedly, kind of jealous,and steamed for a few days after the incident, but all it took was some of Kwan’s (seriously heartfelt and not cringe-y at all, in hindsight) poetry to put things back to normal.

 

Somebody claps a hand against his back while he’s wiping his face, and he immediately knows who it is.

 

“Can I borrow your sunglasses today?” Kwan asks – no need for a greeting. “My father and my dad want to go golfing again, and they’re trying to indoctrinate me into their boring club. Those fields are always so sunny. Plus, your sunglasses make me look cooler.”

 

Dash shrugs apologetically as they both amble their way back to the main gym floor, where the rest of the class is doing exercises. “Can’t – Danny sucked the damn things into his weird body again, no doubt.”

 

Kwan’s eyebrows raise. “How can you tell? Maybe he just lost them this time.”

 

The blond snorts. “Like a normal person? I don’t think so. Plus, he always gets this shifty look when I smile at him and he knows he’s done something stupid but doesn’t have a solution for it.”

 

Case in point, Dash catches Danny’s eyes. He smiles.

 

The ghost-boy, in the middle of doing jumping jacks, stumbles fantastically.

 

“See?” Dash flashes that smile at Kwan next. “He thinks I’m so stupid – big dumb Dash can’t figure out that the ghost flying around that looks, sounds, and acts just like him _is_ him.”

 

All that his taller friend does is shake his head. “You’re evil,” he declares, slipping a spidery hand up Dash’s arm in a teasing motion. “I’m gonna tell my father that you’d just _love_ to be included in this afternoon’s golf session...”

 

“Like hell you are!”

 

 _“Oh, Dashiel is such a nice young man,”_ Kwan imitates his father’s voice, dodging Dash’s attempts at grabbing him expertly. _“You should invite him more often. We might even ask him to come nudge tiny white balls into holes and get matching sunburns all day long! Yes, such a wonderful idea, hum dee dum!”_

 

“They don’t even sound like that!” Dash complains, laughing as he finally gets a hand around Kwan’s waist and, admittedly, has a bit of hard time reigning the other boy in.

 

Man – Kwan’s really packing in those pounds these days.

 

Dash would be jealous (they’ve shared almost identical heights, weights, and body types since forever, after all) if he wasn’t so proud.

 

Their little party is broken up with the substitute gym teacher blowing her whistle and yelling at them for loitering on the sidelines. They both begrudgingly make class a little bit funner by challenging each other to a race while jogging.

 

 

~~oOo~~

* * *

 

~~oOo~~

 

Kwan’s gifted poetry over the years is taped, tacked, or sometimes even stapled to the different planes of Dash’s bedroom walls.

 

The quarterback’s powder blue bed is covered in stuffed animals – he likes to makes it every morning, meticulously placing each bear, cat, dog, or what-have-you in their rightful spots.

 

A lone panda bear, looking like it was stitched by the unskilled hands of a thirteen year old, sits on top of a shelf in the corner. It doesn’t collect dust, because Dash won’t let it. It was the first stuffed animal he ever made, and he unofficially gave it to Kwan.

 

Kwan’s room is an utter garbage mess, though, so they both agreed to just keep it at Dash’s house. It’s not like Kwan doesn’t see the inside of that house nearly every day, anyway.

 

“So, what do you think about me and Star?” Kwan asks, gesturing with his hand as he lays on his back on Dash’s bed, legs kicking off the end. “Do you think we should get back together? Or maybe I should play it chill...”

 

Dash, who sits at his room’s desk and taps away at a computer, blandly looks over at Kwan and pushes his reading glasses down his nose in order to look over the rim condescendingly.

 

“You’re right, you’re right,” Kwan supplies by himself, no action needed on Dash’s part. “I should just play it cool. Let her come to me, you know?”

 

Dash hums noncommittally and makes a face at the screen where his English homework goads him.

 

Kwan and Dash actually declared their ‘undying love’ for each other several times, mostly in middle school. Then that got boring once they realized… not a whole lot changed with their relationship now that they were ‘dating.’ It just felt the same, except maybe with extra kisses.

 

Scratch that. There were always kisses, actually.

 

Then this girl named _Star_ came along, and Kwan got sort of… twitterpated. Told Dash “I wonder what it would be like to fall in love with someone new?” and Dash just sort of shrugged and said “Go for it?”

 

“Are you sure!?” A surprised fourteen year old Kwan asked.

 

“Yea, I’ve got no problem with it,” Dash replied, naturally and easily. Because he really _didn’t_ have a problem with it – he and Kwan were popular guys, Kwan maybe even more so. “I’ve kind of been expecting this.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“You’re just a nice guy with a lot of love to share?” Dash offered with a self-conscious shrug. “I don’t know. Just uh, just make sure whoever this ‘Star’ is, she knows that we’re also dating. If you want to date her too.”

 

Now, in junior year, they’re both seventeen, relaxing in Dash’s room. Star and Kwan have gotten together, broken up, gotten together, had a break, then broke up again, in that order in the time between.

 

“You sure you don’t want to try for something with Star, too?” Kwan asks, which he has like a dozen times. "You'd balance us out pretty good in a relationship, I think."

 

“Ehh...” Dash responds, which is new – usually he just says ‘no thanks’ and ‘have fun though.’ “Ask me when I’ve got more money.”

 

Kwan, wearing the necklace Dash bought him and the jersey jacket Dash has sewn up for him a thousand times, laughs outright. “You’ve got a deal.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slight continuation from ch1 and ch4, where danny accidentally sucked dash's stolen sunglasses into his weird ghost body when he transformed haha. now you know that it's happened more than once ;;;)
> 
> also dash/kwan are together but in a pretty open relationship, and they'll 100% be polyamorous later in their life. but right now they're both young and still just working in school and stuff, so they accept that maybe now isn't the time. later, when they're more stable.


	7. oOoOoOo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paulina came out as asexual in middle school and Starr's only relationship experience is an on-and-off again one with Kwan.
> 
> (Paulina is an asexual lesbian. Starr is an aromantic bisexual. They don't communicate this very well.)
> 
> They find each other anyway.

 

Starr is really bad with crushes.

 

Once upon a childhood story, a boy tried to ‘marry’ her on the playground of her second elementary school. She had shouted _“_ _N_ _o!”_ because, at the time, her grandparents had her a firm believer in ‘marriage is between a man and a woman’, and again, at the time, her grandparents had her an equally firm believer that she was a boy who would one day be a man who marries a woman.

 

Thankfully, her grandparents died months apart from each other in between 5th and 6th grade, so the concern of her parents forcing her to impress her grandparents was no longer an issue, and she transitioned both between genders and between schools, for safety’s sake.

 

However, in middle school, things were still not all sunshine and roses.

 

A boy confessed to her, this time during gym, which was the grown up version of ‘playtime’, or whatever pre-teens considered ‘grown up’ anyways.

 

She honked like a goose and slapped him on the arm, called him silly, then frolicked away to go hide under the bleachers and call her dad to come pick her up.

 

It worked the other way around, too. When she had a crush (or, well, she’s pretty sure it was a crush? She just thought he was hot, to be honest) on a boy in 8th grade, she convinced herself to wait until the very last day of middle school to say anything to him. Her bright idea was to confess to him in front of the whole graduating year.

 

All that accomplished was making him act very, very awkward as he publicly turned her down. She went into summer feeling absurdly guilty and ashamed at putting him and herself on the spot like that.

 

Contacting the boy again to apologize led to him telling her that he was actually in the middle of something of a sexuality crisis, but he would be okay with going on a romantic date with her, though he didn’t think he could get into the physical stuff very well…

 

Starr did the mature thing and politely told him that she was also in the middle of a sexuality crisis, and that maybe they should both just forget about it.

 

She has yet to confess to another crush since.

 

And Kwan probably doesn’t count because they seemed to have skipped over the whole ‘hold hands and go to the movies together’ and went straight for the ‘exploring each others bodies’ part.

 

Which Starr is 0% ashamed about these days, most likely _because_ of Kwan’s amazing idea for them to both get used to their changing bodies and trans experience together.

 

 _Although, one current crush does make me want to try again,_ thinks Starr, peeking around the corner at Paulina, who is at her locker chatting with Dash. _But she’d probably hate me afterwards…_

 

After all, Paulina Sanchez came out as asexual just a few months before Starr’s disastrous confession. She’s turned down multiple confessions herself, and has shown no interest in Starr beyond that of a school friend.

 

Starr sighs, mourning her distance from Paulina’s locker as she flits back around the corner to rifle through her bookbag for the right textbook.

 

Across the hall, Valerie and Wes are speaking to each other in hushed voices, Wes looking as weasley as he usually does and Valerie seemingly detached from his excitable mood.

 

Valerie must possess uncanny senses, as she catches Starr staring and glances over.

 

Starr does her best to wave nonchalantly and smile, closing her locker and heading off to class before Wes can also discover her nosiness.

 

She’s still wary of Valerie and Wes after what Danny told her happened that one time in the bathroom, and out behind the school. She still thinks Danny shouldn’t have thrown Wes around like that, but Danny does a lot of things Starr doesn’t approve of.

 

Still… Valerie, lately, seems to have been making efforts to be friends with more people. She’d even apologized to Danny for making that transphobic comment, and Danny had accepted, but he confessed to Starr one night when they were in the group chat that he still felt funny around Valerie for some reason. Not that he was uncomfortable around her anymore, oh no, just that there was something about Valerie that he couldn’t quite put his finger on...

 

Kwan said maybe it’s a crush, and Starr agreed! But Danny mentioned something vague about his parents calling for him, and didn’t return to the conversation that night.

 

 _I guess that’s enough about romance from me,_ Starr chides herself as she slides into her seat for first period.

 

Paulina slots herself into her own seat not but one row away, gives Starr a saucy wink, and applies more tinted lip moisturizer.

 

~~oOo~~

* * *

 

~~oOo~~

 

Paulina is great with crushes. And here’s an example to prove it:

 

“If you touch me, you die,” she said, all of twelve years old, to the highschool freshman that had followed her on all of her social media, liked all of her selfies and ‘shelfies’ ( _my_ _shelves full of skincare_ _are_ _a hit on skincare threads,_ _almost as much as my beautiful skin_ ), and had finagled her cell number out of one of her more flaky friends.

 

“But… but I like you,” connived the boy, holding his chest like he had a fluttering heart in his hands instead of a few inches of sweaty human flesh. Paulina curled her lip at the visual.

 

“And?” She snapped back, throwing her waist-length hair over one shoulder. “You think that gives you the right to my body? I don’t think so, _chico tonto.”_

 

The _small boy_ had quivered with visible fuckor before scurrying off with his tail between his legs. She went home and blocked him on everything before making a scathing post about it, sure to embarrass his family for generations, and to punish her flaky friends for going along with his foolishness.

 

_See? I’m amazing at this!_

 

“Pauli...” Begins Starr, twisting her hands around and around as they both sit on Paulina’s bed in their pajamas. “If I said that I… liked you, like _like liked_ you… what would you do?”

 

Paulina’s entire world pauses.

 

 _I don’t feel so amazing at this anymore,_ she thinks in the absence of concrete action.

 

“Just, like,” Starr stutters. A strand of blonde hair falls from her messy bun, brushing against her eyebrows, “hypothetically, y’know.”

 

“I know,” answers Paulina, even though she very much doesn’t know right now.

 

She barely hears it when Starr fumbles to explain, jumping between “like, y’know, in the ‘wow she’s so pretty’ way- not that I don’t love you as a friend already!” and “but this is all just a hypothetical situation, since you know I’ve only ever been with Kwan and I know that you’ve never accepted any sort of dating proposal- probably? I’m right, right? Uh, anyways...”

 

Eventually, Paulina gets the picture, and holds up her hand. All of her nails are perfect.

 

_This bodes well._

 

“I love you too,” she starts with, seeing the red bloom on her friend’s face in response, “but I think there’s been some kind of mix-up. I did come out as _asexual_ _es_ when I was eleven. You remember this, since you were the first one I showed the Facebook group _REVA – Red para la Educación y la Visibilidad de la Asexualidad.”_

 

“Right,” Starr readily agrees, shifting in place.

 

“What I haven’t told you yet is that I am also a lesbian.” Starr’s eyes go wide and she becomes even more flushed. Paulina can tell almost immediately that the girl has got it bad.

 

“Why not? I mean, why not tell me?”

 

“Because I wasn’t sure how to.” Paulina runs a hand through her hair and sighs, turning on the salt lamp on her beside table. “Most of the people I tried to explain my asexuality to already didn’t understand. I didn’t know how to go the step further and also say that I like girls, too.”

 

Starr tilts her head to the side in her adorably thoughtful way. “I think I see your point. I, um, actually...” She goes back to twiddling her fingers and looking bashful. “I think I might be like that, too. Well, not the asexual part, but like the part where I don’t really think I care about romance?”

 

Paulina blinks. “Aromantic? Do you think that sounds good?”

 

Starr shakes her head, smiling. “I don’t know yet! But thanks for telling me about all this – it’s a bit much to sort through in one night, though. Maybe we should just…?” She motions her previously nervously stimming hands to the laptop they abandoned, queuing up the newest season of their favorite TV show.

 

As much as Paulina would love to forget about anything stressful and just get to the season premiere of One Day At A Time already, she narrows her eyes at her friend instead.

 

Starr, like a normal human being, fidgets nervously.

 

“So, hypothetically...” Paulina takes the time to stretch her arms above her head. Starr follows the movement with fluttery blue eyes. _So this is what it’s like,_ she silently muses. “If I were to kiss you right now...”

 

Starr makes a choked squeaking noise.

 

“What would you do?”

 

After only a few moments of silent deliberation, Starr leans over and takes Paulina’s hands into her own. “I’d probably playground marry you on the spot,” she says with a strange kind of seriousness.

 

Paulina claps their joined hands together and laughs loud enough to wake her _abuelita_ from her after-dinner nap.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot of these have just turned into 'my gay awakening' stories and i'm more than fine with that

**Author's Note:**

> most chapter ideas harken back to [this post](http://narwhalsarefalling.tumblr.com/post/157509400900/reblog-to-make-butch-hartman-anger)
> 
> tags will be updated by chapter


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